Podcast

Why it's much higher than we're told/sold

by Adam Taggart

Over the past decade, we've been told that inflation has been tame — actually below the target the Federal Reserve would like to see. But if that's true, then why does the average household find it harder and harder to get by?

The ugly reality is that the true annual cost of living is far outpacing the government's reported inflation rate. By nearly 10x in many parts of the country.

This week, we welcome Ed Butowsky, developer of the Chapwood Index, to the program. His index is a 'real world' measure of how prices are increasing much faster than the wages of the 99% can afford.

The forces driving today’s ongoing economic crisis were sketched out decades ago in the pages of the Club of Rome’s epochal 1973 study, The Limits to Growth. Mention that book to most people nowadays, and those who admit they’ve heard of it at all routinely insist that it made false claims about the future.

The irony – and it’s not a small one – is that this simply isn’t true…

A society in this situation can expand its production of goods and services – its 'wealth economy,' in the terms used in Part I – up to the limits of the environment’s ability to provide resources and absorb waste. Once those limits appear in the rearview mirror, though, any further expansion of the wealth economy runs into two insurmountable difficulties…

Blog

by Adam Taggart

“Straight Talk” features thinking from notable minds that the ChrisMartenson.com audience has indicated it wants to learn more about. Readers submit the questions they want addressed and our guests take their best crack at answering. The comments and opinions expressed by our guests are their own.

This week’s Straight Talk contributor is ‘Jesse’, founder and proprieter of Jesse’s Café Américain (jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com), one of the more esteemed and veteran econoblogs. Jesse publishes regular observations on the macroeconomic factors impacting the financial markets, as well as exceptionally rich technical analysis – his price forecast charts of gold and silver are ‘must reads’ for anyone who seriously invests or trades precious metals. Recently, his site was rated as the fourth-most-influential blog in financial media by Mindful Money.

1. Jesse’s Café Américain has emerged as a well-regarded source for insight into the key indicators driving the markets. Can you summarize your overall outlook for the economy and what macro trends investors and traders should be following most closely?

Stagflation has been my forecast for quite some time as the most likely outcome, with a real protracted deflation or hyperinflation as lesser probabilities.

by Chris Martenson

One of the key questions of our day, especially for those who have wealth to protect, is, “What’s going to happen to the dollar?” More specifically, do we foresee an increase in the value of money going forward (deflation), or a decrease in the value of money (inflation)? Should we reserve a small amount of concern for the possibility of hyperinflation, which means the rapid and often total destruction of a currency?

There happens to be a lot of discussion around this topic these days. Unfortunately, much of it is confusing and contradictory, because far too much misinformation is included in the mix. So let’s begin by getting ourselves on firm footing before we look at the data.

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Inflation correlates poorly with growth in the monetary base, making that statistic relatively useless as a predictor of inflation. However, inflation correlates extremely well with growth in government spending, meaning that we’d do well to track that statistic closely.

The current economic crisis is being fought tooth and nail by a determined Federal Reserve (in the role of the "enabler") and an equally-determined US government (in the role of the heavy-lifter, assuming all the lion’s share of the long-term debt and risk). Together, these institutions have virtually consigned future generations to the enormous challenge of wrestling with bloated budgets in desperate need of trimming, further compounded by coinciding with periods of high inflation.